I'm a writer. But there are zillions of writers. Here's some of my stuff.

Menu

Mea Culpa on the Pasadena Freeway

My wife read me a gentle but firm riot act for arguing politics at a party tonight. I got the reading on the ride home. The Pasadena Freeway was a tangle on the oncoming side, three lanes funneling into one, lights stacked up the entire northbound length. We zipped along southbound, which would have been perfect but for the scolding sotto voce. Not that I didn’t have it coming. I apologized, made a joke, talked about the traffic. Ahem. That low grade shame, like getting caught chatting up somebody’s wife, pretending I hadn’t been, changing the subject. Man, look at all those cars going nowhere. Meaning we were going somewhere, moving, and ain’t that a good thing? She admitted it was a good thing. I imagined being stuck on the other side, going nowhere, and getting read the riot act. It wouldn’t have been so gentle then, not there in the middle of a freeway going nowhere. My ego would take a helluva beating, and I could say nothing, certainly not argue. There are times in a husband’s life that he knows not to argue, That would be one of them. I thought about that and sped along and sighed quietly in relief. We’d be home soon, and my behavior would be forgotten for the night. It’ll come up again. Wives always do that, bring up some ancient infraction just to prove some unrelated point. It works. A husband has no idea what to say then, blindsided by ancient memories of a political argument at a party, or hitting on some long forgotten somebody else’s wife. Which is why I never argue politics at a party.

Except for tonight. I certainly argued politics tonite. But let’s not start that again. I just found my way out of that paragraph.

I used to work with a very likeable Tea Party sort. I never argued politics, tho’ he would, solo. Fulminating like a fool over something or other. Once he began ranting about Cesar Chavez. I can’t remember why. He just really hated Cesar Chavez. Hated him so much he stomped up and down, hating him. Stomped and stomped. I looked up from my desk and said, simply, I used to work for Cesar Chavez. Which I did, actually. The effect was immediate. He stopped, mid-stomp, turned red and returned to his cubicle without uttering a sound. Last I heard about Cesar Chavez.

I didn’t stomp today. I bellowed, though. I was one of those. Ah well. Won’t happen again, I tell myself. My wife says sure, that’s it, just sure. Point taken.

Archives

My latest writing at: Brick's Picks

Eddie Money was punk rock to me. Or was that Meat Loaf. Yeah, Meat Loaf. Eddie Money was Meat Loaf to me, but also punk rock. No, that was the Ramones. The Ramones were punk rock to me, Eddie Money was Meat Loaf to me, and Meat Loaf was, I dunno, maybe Pat Benatar. Anyway, […]

“Look! I don’t like to get pushed around! I don’t like people I like to be pushed around! I don’t like anybody to get pushed around!” That was Sam Masterson, played by Van Heflin at his peak, in the noir classic The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). It’s a startling, electrifying line for a […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Politics

Trump’s endlessly bizarre behavior at G7 makes perfect sense if he has Alzheimer’s. He didn’t lie about those calls from China. He thought they had occurred. I wonder how often this is happening. My guess is daily. Soon he’ll be seeing people who are not there. He’s not making sense because he is descending into […]

Letting Mueller play himself at the hearing was a terrible idea. George Clooney would have been a much better Robert Mueller. It’s all about the optics. Imagine Watergate without Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. WoodStein as WoodStein? Seriously? Nixon would still be President.

My latest writing at: Brick's History

[Found this forgotten in the drafts folder from 2018.] Was at Ralphs and checked out the poor people veggie bin and there were three big bundles of potatoes at 99 cents each. My Irish German heart was set aflutter and I bought all three and once home dropped them into the tuber bag with the […]

I haven’t seen this pointed out yet, but the reason that prime minister Boris Johnson was able to suspend Parliament legally is because Great Britain is a monarchy. It’s a parliamentary monarchy, sure, but it is first and foremost a monarchy and if the monarch says sure, suspend parliament, then that is the law. The […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Science

If you aren’t doing so already you might wanna set yourself up a WordPress blog (they’re free, but your own domain will cost $18/yr, about three slices of the San Francisco pizza you posted so eloquently about) and after you spill your essays onto Facebook you can cut and paste them onto your blog. Instant […]

If the birth control pill hadn’t been invented the year I was born think of how many more of you there would be. Look around. Double the numbers of middle aged people you see. Quadruple the number of twenty somethings. Octuple the children. The pill took care of that excess. Incidentally, the peak year for […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Brain

Not going to delete the blogs, tho’ I’d love to. It’s not the solution, tho’ it seemed like a great terrible idea at the time. Seriously, I was all ready to get rid of 90% of everything I’d ever written to reduce clutter. How’s that for a revolutionary act? The Pol Pol approach to website […]

As part of my excruciatingly dull mellow epileptic lifestyle I had to cut off contact with some people who, through no fault of their own, were really bad for my epilepsy. Just too intense, too volatile. I never told them. I just sort of slipped away. Now I’m having to do the same on Facebook, […]